Cal stared at him, unnerved.
Finally, when he could control himself enough to speak, Goldie gasped out, “I read between the lines, Cal, the stone lions. Up the steps into the vastness, where the books are. Signs everywhere but no one to see, no, it took a true omnivore, at liberty, so to speak, time to burn. The ancients got it, some of it, a bit at least. Eratosthenes and Iamblichus and Zhang Heng. Then the modern boys boogied in, R amp;B, R amp;D…. The Ordo Templi Orientis, Gurjieff, Von Liebenfels, Hoerbinger and Deibner of the Reich. A grand jete over the Rhine to the Volga, and a Red frisson from Petukhov and Emelyanov. The Wall comes down and our own little burrowers join in, Kaiser Wilhelm to Popov to Arzamas to Sandia, spinning, spinning….”
His eyes were wild now, face glistening in the firelight. “Insanely simple, if you know where to look.”
Cal’s heart was a stone in him, face rigid. “I see,” he said, measuring his words. He rose. “I’m sorry. I’ve got to go.”
He was moving toward the entrance now, wondering how-if-he could find his way through the labyrinth without his lantern.
“Wait! Wait! No!” Goldie headed Cal off. “I’m going to help! That’s what this miracle’s all about!” His buttons clattered against each other as he waved his arms, nukes and whales and smiley faces.
Cal backed deeper into the room at Goldie’s onslaught, bumped against something hard and uneven. He turned to it-and all thought of Goldie fell away.
Towering over him, unnoticed before in the gloom, rose an enormous pile of junk, thirty feet and more. Castoffs of every imaginable kind: baby buggies and stuffed blowfish, Lava lamps and hair dryers, tooled leather saddles, bus-station TVs in wire mesh, party hats, roulette wheels, even an iron lung. Scavenged from every part of the city for years, a dazzling magpie variety, a masterpiece of obsessive packrattery.
Cal ran his eyes along the hypnotic disorder of it, lifted his gaze to the ragged pinnacle. And now he could see, high above the pile in the distant cavern roof, a hole piercing to the surface. It was through this that the shaft of evening sunlight slanted in, dust motes dancing as it sliced golden onto the great heap of useless, coveted things, picking out one brilliant, incredible object.
It was a sword. Not ornate and loud, glittering its arrogance, but quietly assured in its darkened steel, the hand-worn leather of its hilt.
Cal knew it. It was the one in his dream.
A killing thing, he thought, designed to cut through flesh and muscle and bone. It filled him with dread. If I take this, where will it lead me?
Nowhere I won’t need to go.
He clambered up the hill of marvels and refuse toward it, slipped back, found purchase and climbed. Eight-track players fell away under his hands, CRT monitors shifted and held. He pulled himself over jagged edges of plastic and metal and glass, got tangled in lengths of coaxial cable, tore himself free and kept climbing.
At last, it was within reach. He grasped the cool, welcoming hilt, felt it join to him, as much himself as his heart. He pulled, and the blade slipped smoothly from its prison of debris.
Cal slid back down, leapt the final ten feet or so and landed on solid ground, prize in hand. Goldie came up beside him, silent.
“Where did you find this?” Cal asked.
“Where do you find anything? Someone threw it out.”
Cal made a few practice moves with it. It was deliciously, ominously heavy, and light.
“It likes you,” Goldie said. “Consider it a gift.”
Cal nodded thanks, self-conscious.
Goldie turned to the pile, rummaged about a moment, then pulled a second object free. He turned back to Cal, holding it in front of him, an offering.
It was the scabbard, secured to a belt with a strange worked buckle. Cal seized it, slid the blade effortlessly into it. He thought of Colleen with her crossbow, Goldie with his snare. To each, by his nature.
He held the belt out before him, hesitating at this last embrace, then thought of his sister. He secured it around his waist.
“Goldie,” Cal’s voice was contemplative. “Do you believe in dreams?”
“Very little else.” He stepped close to Cal, his gaze calm now, voice sure. “I can help you. Trust me.”
From behind his eyes, from the place where he lay curled and hidden, Sam Lungo watched himself and screamed.
Not that anyone could hear him.
Sunset was just settling over the street, washing everything in burnished tones of flame. The crowd had swelled, faces ardent and hungry, eyes gleaming. He held them in thrall, his voice liquid and easy, the words coming effortlessly.
Of course, it wasn’t him, not really. It was Ely. Somehow, he had planted part of himself here inside, like a wasp laying its eggs in an insect host. Sam was merely a passenger, a dormant accomplice, like a paralytic after his neck had been broken or a torture victim clamped to a chair.
“What happened to values?” he heard himself call to the eager throng. “What happened to the Golden Rule? Ask the big shots-he who has the gold makes the rules!”
Shouts of agreement erupted from the crowd.
“They’ve been insulated by their life of privilege, their limos, their offshore tax shelters. But that’s all over now.”
Folks nodded, an ugly, avaricious look to most of them. In the back, a young man in dreadlocks shook his head. “This is sick, man.”
Heads turned toward him, eyes spoke indignation and violence. The young man parted from the mass and was gone. The rest stayed rooted to the spot.
“Only one rule now, friends. Survival of the fittest. And the fittest aren’t in Armani sweatsuits on the StairMaster. They’re the ones who can smell which way the wind blows!”
Across the street, beyond the crowd, Sam spied a National guardsman listening uneasily, standing watch over a chained-up electronics store. Ely is seeing this through my eyes, Sam realized, and felt a distant echo of anticipation. Desperately, Sam tried to move some small part of his body by his own volition-blink his eyes, move a pinky- and could not. Now I know why Pinocchio wanted to be human, he thought wildly, and would have shrieked in hysterical, anguished laughter if he could have uttered a sound.
“It’s a new day,” Sam was saying. “No fast shuffle, no bait and switch. We take what’s ours.”
A guy in the crowd piped up, “What you talkin’ about? Those soldiers got guns!”
“You’re right.” Sam leaned in, said slyly, “But we have an ace up our sleeve. Wanna know what?”
It was straight line and punchline. From the crowd burst a roar of affirmatives. Sam twisted around and pointed toward a shadowed space between the buildings. “Ely!”
Stern emerged from behind piled crates, stepped lightly onto the street beside Sam. As one, the crowd gasped and drew back. A few screamed.
He was an astonishment. The shredded flesh and pustules and oddly cracked bone had healed to a vibrant efficiency of muscle and claw, covered in tough, pebbled hide. In the darkling light, a muted iridescence gleamed rainbow off his scales of black and brown and ocean green. His folded wings swept high above his dragon’s head like a cathedral arch.
Staring wildly at him, the crowd shouted, threatened to shear off, scatter, be lost. Sam extended his arms. “It’s all right! It’s all right! He’s on our side!” Sam wondered how Ely could manage to work his own body and Sam’s simultaneously. But then, in the time Sam had known him, Ely had proven himself a man-thing-of endless invention and resource.
The crowd quieted, but tentatively, unsure.
Stern’s glance slid over them toward the horizon, a mirror of the dying sun. “A visual aid. .” His voice was a rumble they could feel in their bones.